Where 2.0 Thoughts 2

Still mulling over the conference. Local search and mobile stick in my mind most. As Paul Ramsey (see earlier entry) mentioned, money and maps remains foremost in peoples minds. It still feels as though people are scratching around for good ideas. The big boys continue to lead the way. With but a few upstarts joining the exclusives party. For me chatting with attendees was my highlight. Half the expected number attended this year (500 I believe), which made for easier conversations and a more personal atmosphere.

I was surprised by the number of non-geo people there. There is certainly a wide appeal to mapping and the recognised growth potential.

3-D was much mentioned also at the conference. I still have mixed feelings about 3-D. Seems like eye candy to me. Like VRML. I think real apps will come out of this. But I care little about seeing a distorted map of my neighbourhood. Nothing I saw at Where made me change my opinion. Let's make useful apps which are also just cool looking.

Mapping Presentation

I've just finished work on a presentation on 'Internet mapping application development options'. So open source and proprietary tools currently available. It is an ever more confusing landscape.

The presentation hopefully helps to demystify things somewhat. See:

http://www.flexmappers.com/mapstutorial

Stamen at it Again

Mike and the Stamen team are showing us all the way again. They have updated their crime spotting site. It is just brilliant I think; design, interactivity, the lot.
Take a look at:

http://oakland.crimespotting.org/

Where 2.0 Reflections 1

Just read an interesting article by Paul Ramsey on the Where conference at:

http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=3167

I'll give my thoughts in another post. Paul's themes:

much chatter on monetize and mobile ... twitter ... so many geolocation API's ... data mining ... many predictable and dull applications

The quote I most liked was from IRC. Paul paraphrases:

"location based social networking start-ups are all solving a problem (keeping in touch with, and meeting up with, a diverse network of friends in a big urban area) that is of greatest importance to a fairly narrow cultural niche. Why are we devoting so much venture capital to solving the social problems of young white collar professionals who have recently moved to a new city?"

FlakeFinder

I'm so behind on blog updates. Today is a multiple entry day. I've been working with Leif at Arkade Magazine; its a free snowboarding magazine distributed in the Western US:

http://www.arkademag.com

Leif wanted to add an interactive map to his site; one which shows ski resort locations and links in resort specific weather, webcams, video, trail maps, up to date snow conditions and depths. The site was launched in January see:

http://www.flakefinder.com

It's work in progress. But this is an open source mash up. It would be very cool done on an international scale ...

Adobe Flex Developer Center

I'm about to be published. No not a book. But an article. Adobe are assessing a first draft of an article I wrote using the soon to be released Flex 4 framework. Its an introduction to developing a rich internet mapping application using Modest Maps. The release date is mid July. I'll provide a link closer to this date. The article links to running versions of the applications, the code can be also downloaded from here. Take a sneak peek at:

http://www.flexmappers.com/mymodestmap

http://www.flexmappers.com/myadvancedmodestmap

Where 2.0

I'm just back from the Where 2.0 conference. Its been over 2 years since I have attended. This years was particularly excellent. It is still relatively small. And attended by some of the key people in the industry. They are all very approachable. So its a great chance to chat. The videos of presentations are all available on the web site at:

http://en.oreilly.com/where2009

The videos give a feel for trends. I'll give more thoughts on the conference and some of these trends in subsequent posts.